The students of sociology and of economic reform will plan and contrive systems of life that shall create and preserve the rights and property of all only to see them swept away as the tidal wave sweeps away a city in its ruthless coming on. Education realizing as it does that its purpose is not only to instruct but to nourish and tutor the soul, to win the mind to love and inspiring thoughts, sees its gentle years made worse than wasted by the hours of passion and hatred that lengthen into weeks, months and years of war. It sees its histories made hateful and horrid with the tales of grief and death. Seeking in some small way to assist the church in its work of winning love for one’s neighbor, it has to place upon its shelves the stories that engender hate and fear. Not the good things that our neighbors have done us but the ill that we have done to them and they have done to us are made the subject of story and glory. Art is conscripted to herald forth the might, majesty and mystery of hell, caparisoned in all the trappings of death’s glitter and brandishing the latest implement of pain. Poetry’s sweet notes become rasping and strident as they reiterate the tales that should only be told or sung by the furies and witches of Hades.

Two thousand years ago we were told that no man could serve two masters and yet the apologists of war tell us with astounding frankness that the morals of the state and of the individual not only can but should be different. Man can at the behest of state, wound, maim, tear, and kill, he may commit rape, robbery, arson and murder and yet be virtuous. He can do this and still be expected to go back to his home and be as noble and loved a rational creature as he was before. While he is doing this and spreading misery, those whom he has left behind for a time or forever are also ennobled and inspired and those to whom he comes, whose villages are crushed by shot and shell and rendered a flaming sacrifice on the altar of war, are taught the power of godlike soldiers. The time will come, however, when we shall realize that man cannot serve not only God and Mammon but he cannot serve God and Mars. Who knows but we are simply awaiting the scientist who shall show the unerring and uninterrupted flood from the horrors of war to the criminal years of peace. The seeds that we sow in the years of hatred and pain bring forth the fruit that fill our prisons and render our normal life so fretful and feverish.

The war state tells its people to forgive and forget, to coöperate, to sacrifice, to be unselfish and yet it says to its people: “You as a unit shall not coöperate, you shall fight, you shall not forgive and forget, you shall cherish revenge and nourish the passion to retaliate. You shall not as a people make sacrifices, you shall take from others and make others sacrifice.” Either Mars or God, must and will at length prevail. The world cannot forever serve them both.

The war state is to its neighbor as the robber is to the unprepared banker. The war state says: “You have had years to prepare for war and you have not prepared. You have put your strength to the uses and arts of peace, you have developed the mind and the spirit of your people and since you have neglected its iron body you must render tribute unto me.” So a robber might say to a bank president: “You have had time to build your vault of steel and install your burglar alarms yet you have not prepared and I have come with my revolver and lantern to deprive you of your well earned gain. I shall deprive you even of the earnings of the poor that have been entrusted to you, for might makes right and force is the power that rules the world.” The pugilist might as well say to the college president: “You have had years to develop your muscles, and to perfect yourself in the art of fisticuff and self-defense and you have neglected it, therefore I shall assume your position and if you like it not I shall give you a knockout blow and drag you from your college office.”

A world of harmony, a world that shall in truth know the music of the spheres will not be known until it becomes a world of forgiveness, of international coöperation and sacrifice. As difficult as it was and long as it took, the modest forgiveness that has marked the relations of the North and South and the wholeness that has blessed that forgiveness and coöperation is an unquestionable witness to the virtue and necessity of applying to peoples and states the same virtues and the same ethics that we apply one to another. We have got to limit not only the war state but the war man. We have got to realize that not only as individuals but as states, we are all members one of another. Nationalism is in its best sense, a virtue just as individualism is in its best sense a virtue. The individual should give to the world the best that is in him and so should the state, but no more can a state give it by making war than can a man by being an enemy of his fellows.

Much of the nationalism that we hear about is worse than useless because it engenders hatred and nourishes pride. Who to-day thinks that Hayne’s ideal was higher than Webster’s? What is there in being a South Carolinian, or of the State of Massachusetts, so important as being a citizen of the United States or what is there about being a citizen of the United States so glorious as being a brother of all mankind?

PEACE THROUGH ECONOMIC PRESSURE
HOW COMMERCE CAN BE AN EFFECTIVE FORCE BEHIND THE WORLD COURT—ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE WORLD COURT CONGRESS IN CLEVELAND ON MAY 14TH

BY

HERBERT S. HOUSTON

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